Semiconductors and other electrical components generate heat as a by-product of their operation. As technology has advanced, the amount of heat to be dissipated from many of these components has risen dramatically, while the acceptable cost of heat dissipating devices has remained constant or, in many cases, has dropped. Consequently, the art of heat sinking to cool heat dissipating components has continually evolved to meet these new market requirements.
One current need involves the cooling of IGBT semiconductors, which often have power dissipation requirements of over 500 Watts. Until now, liquid cooled heat sinks have been the only effective means for cooling many of these high power devices and, consequently, these types of heat sinks have become the fastest growing segment of the power heat sink industry. Unfortunately, liquid cooling is a last resort due to its high cost and potential for catastrophic failure in the event that leaks occur. Therefore, many designers have eschewed liquid cooling and, instead have accepted reduced performance from these devices in order to allow them to be cooled by forced air convective heat sink assemblies.
Forced air convective heat sink assemblies have typically used finned metal heat sinks to dissipate heat generated by electrical components. These finned metal heat sinks generally include a substantially rectangular base plate to which the heat generating device or devices are mounted, and a plurality of fins projecting from the base plate for dissipating the generated heat. In many applications, a fan is attached to the assembly in order to force cooling air across the fins of the heat sink and enhance cooling from the heat sinks. In these applications, the amount of heat that may be dissipated from heat sink of given volume at a given air velocity is directly related to the efficiency of the heat sink.
Heat sink efficiency is defined as thermal performance generated per given volume. An efficient heat sink provides substantial cooling, while consuming a small physical volume. In general, the more surface area the heat sink has, the more heat you can typically transfer from the component. However, in many applications, other factors come into play that can limit the effectiveness of any increase in heat sink surface area. One such factor is the flow profile of the fluid at its interface with the heat dissipating surfaces. In many cases, the fluid flowing along fins of a finned heat sink will form a boundary layer having substantially laminar flow. As fluid flowing in this fashion is relatively poor at removing heat, these boundary layers tend to increase in temperature, with heat being primarily dissipated by the turbulent air flowing adjacent to this layer. Boundary layers are especially troublesome when fins are spaced closely together, as the boundary layers formed on adjacent fins tend to overlap along the bottom portion of the trough created by the adjacent fins and the base, causing what is commonly referred to as “choking”. This choking limits the surface area of the boundary layer that is in contact with the flow of turbulent fluid and, consequently, limits the overall thermal performance of the heat sink.
One common means of reducing the effect of choking in finned heat sinks has been to utilize a plurality of “pin fins”, which extend from the base and have spaces therebetween that act to break up any boundary layers that would be formed on long, straight fins. Pin fin heat sinks come in many forms and may or may not appear as individual pins. For example, some heat sinks utilize traditional finned extrusions that are cross cut to produce short finned sections broken up by spaces. Others are cast to have substantially cylindrical extending pins. Others are impact extruded to create a variety of unique configurations. Still others are manufactured through skiving and broaching operations, or by fully machining the desired profile. Regardless of their particular configuration, the common thread is that the spaces between the pins, sections of fin, etc. act to reduce the thickness of boundary layers about each pin and increase the amount of turbulent air flowing there between. This reduction in boundary layer thickness generally allows pins to be more densely spaced than straight fins, without choking, resulting in increased effective surface area and increased heat sink efficiency.
Unfortunately, pin fin type heat sinks also have distinct limitations. The most significant of these limitations is caused by conduction losses from the heat source though the pins. Conduction is the process of transferring heat through a specific medium without perceptible motion of the medium itself. When applied to heat sinks, this conduction occurs through molecule to molecule contact and, accordingly, can be said to follow a substantially linear path from the heat source to the tips of the fins or pins. At each of these molecules along the way, the amount of heat transferred from one molecule to the other is dependent upon the thermal conductivity of the material. Materials having high thermal conductivities tend to transfer heat more efficiently, meaning that the adjacent molecule becomes hotter than it would were the material a poor conductor. However, even the best conducting metals are not perfect conductors and, therefore, the temperature of a metal heat sink will always be higher at its base than it is at the tips of its fins. Because heat transfer is higher when the temperature difference between the air and the hot surface is greater, and the fins or pins are incrementally cooler the further they are from heat source, any increase in fin or pin height will have an incrementally reduced effect upon the thermal performance of the heat sink, and consequently, will result in a decrease in heat sink efficiency.
Therefore, there is a need for a heat sink that will efficiently cool heat-generating equipment. It is likewise recognized that, to increase heat sink efficiency, there is also a need to reduce the thickness of boundary layers between fins or pins and to reduce conduction losses through the fins or pins.